Routing Number Grounding Data

Overview

A bank routing number API for ACH payment forms. Pass any nine-digit US routing number to test its mod-10 checksum and look up directory records updated daily. The service categorizes the prefix as primary, thrift, electronic, or government, and identifies the Federal Reserve district. Paid plans add full branch street addresses, city and postal codes, office codes, and updated routing numbers for merged institutions.

Live Test Routing Number Grounding Data Source →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveContext server, this appears in its tool list as RoutingNumberGroundingData. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

{
  "name": "RoutingNumberGroundingData",
  "arguments": {
    "routing": "121000358"
  }
}

You do not name the tool yourself; the model picks it. Asking about 121000358 in the terms this source covers is enough for it to reach for RoutingNumberGroundingData on its own — naming it explicitly also works, and is the way to force the call.

Connecting

One server URL covers every source in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervecontext": {
      "url": "https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "routing_number": "121000358",
    "office_code": "O",
    "record_type_code": "1",
    "new_routing_number": "000000000",
    "bank": "BANK OF AMERICA, N.A.",
    "address": "8001 VILLA PARK DRIVE",
    "city": "HENRICO",
    "state": "VA",
    "zip": "23228",
    "zip_extension": "0000",
    "country": "US",
    "federal_reserve_district": "San Francisco",
    "routing_type": "primary",
    "is_valid_checksum": true,
    "routing_analysis": {
      "is_head_office": true,
      "is_branch": false,
      "is_federal_reserve_bank": false,
      "is_active": true,
      "replaced_by": null
    }
  }
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Why ground on it

A model can produce something that looks like this answer from its training data, and be confidently out of date or simply wrong. This source returns the current value in a shape you can check, which is the difference between an answer you can cite and one you have to hedge.

Point an evaluation at routing_number: it is the field most worth pinning a claim to, and it is either present and current or absent — never plausibly invented.

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

A call costs 10 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

Direct Deposit Setup

When onboarding new hires, payroll systems validate the entered routing number and auto-fill the financial institution name before issuing paychecks.

ACH Transfer Verification

To prevent transfer rejections, payment processors test mod-10 checksums and confirm the receiving bank matches customer paperwork before scheduling debits.

Accounting Vendor Onboarding

Procurement teams verify supplier banking details during vendor registration to catch typos and detect obsolete routing numbers before sending disbursements.

Merchant Account Enrollment

Flag invalid or non-standard bank routing numbers during merchant signup workflows to block fraudulent accounts and reduce settlement errors.

Other ways to use Routing Number Grounding Data

Set up Routing Number Grounding Data on VerveContext, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveContext account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

Related

More in Finance: